Distributed Simulation Techniques Using Conventional Simulation Languages

Fifteen years ago the distinction between simulation languages and general purpose languages was clear. Simulation languages such as SIMSCRIPT and GPSS offered important simulation features that had to be explicitly and tediously developed in a general purpose language. Now the issue is reuse and retraining. Specialized simulation languages from a generation ago are still in wide use. It is clear that past investments in simulation model development and implementation cannot and should not be immediately redesigned to take advantage of the latest distributed architectures. Rather, a migration strategy is appropriate to bring the power of distributed processing to existing simulations implemented with conventional simulation languages. INTRODUCTION Distributed simulation is of interest because of the larger, problem domains which may be feasibly executed with the increased computing power distributed simulation makes available. It is safe to presume that the power of distributed compu..